What happens when you fire a gun into the air?

ErNciLator

ErNciLator

ErNciLator

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Iv always wondered.

Well, if you drop a penny off of blackpool tower and it hit's someone it's meant to be quite dangerous.

Do people get killed from falling bullets? Or do they just go into space?
 
Space. Once they're up there most of them tend to get caught by the gravitational pull of the sun so they just burn up, that is of course unless you fire them at night in which case they'll just land safely on the moon.
 
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a bullets average distance of a 9mm is around 480 meters. LOL at space you need to go up around 60+ plus miles just to consider start.
 
There are a couple of books out compiled from questions asked in the magazine New Scientist which answer questions like this
Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?: And 114 Other Questions
and
Does anything eat wasps?
I'm sure Wiki has some sort of answer as well
 
I think it'd need to be travelling at approx 11km/sec to escape the Earth's atmosphere totally, so angels and astronauts are safe for now...

As for getting hurt? yeah i'd say someone could be badly injured or quite possible killed by a falling bullet. Pretty unfortunate way to go if it did happen too...

(Didn't one of the characters in The Mexican get killed by a falling bullet?)
 
Air resistence and mavity will slow the bullet on the way up, if the bullet was to land on someone on the way back down it could probably kill someone due to the speed itd fall at.

They usually say not to fire guns into the air for this reason.

Although it wont kill someone on the moon, a dead bird might fall down along with the bullet.
 
Don't know about the Mexican but I'm sure there was an episode of CSI where someone had shot a gun into the air and it had kill someone several streets away when it fell.
 
The answer is yes they can kill you :)

Myth busters did a huge episode on this myth they went into a desert and fired a gun then found the bullets to see how far they would impact the ground.

also had a doctor who was an expert on it something along the lines on the July the 4th a yank fired his gun into the air and it landed in a leg of an oap a mile away lol
 
they all come down again - lots of people get killed in the middle east this way - they are always firing their guns up in the air - fools!
if you are in a built up area you should always make sure there is something to absorb the bullet behind the person you are shooting ;)
 
ctrl-alt-elite said:
The answer is yes they can kill you :)

Myth busters did a huge episode on this myth they went into a desert and fired a gun then found the bullets to see how far they would impact the ground.

also had a doctor who was an expert on it something along the lines on the July the 4th a yank fired his gun into the air and it landed in a leg of an oap a mile away lol
Click to expand...

was about to say this :p when they landed in the desert they went in bout 2 - 3 inches so if it hit you in the head it could do damage.

a penny of blackpool tower would not do much damage, maybe a bruse unless it hit you in the eye, it reaches a speed of 66mph iirc. even at 3000mph i dont think it would break skin because it just doesnt have enough mass.
(mythbusters teaches you a lot :p )
 
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